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- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!

Starting last month, Dan Gainor, vice president for business and culture at the Media Research Center, the conservative media watchdog group, went on something of a crusade.

Angered by a joke that David Weigel made about Matt Drudge on his Twitter feed, Gainor contacted conservative groups asking them to stop cooperating with Weigel, who had recently taken his blog about the conservative movement to the Washington Post.

“We encouraged conservatives not to deal with him,” he said. “We contacted other conservative organizations and said, ‘This guy is no friend of the conservative movement. We recommend that you deny him access.’ Some did.”

When MRC asked the Heritage Foundation to disinvite Weigel from its weekly Tuesday blogger briefing, Rob Bluey, the briefing’s organizer, said the meeting was on the record and occasionally attended by liberal journalists, and declined to go along with the group’s request.

Most of the group’s other efforts also failed, but the MRC’s reservations about Weigel — voiced in an early letter to Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, and given public airing on Post Ombudsman Andy Alexander’s piece on the affair on Friday — have played a major role in shaping the debate over whether the Post made the right move in accepting Weigel’s resignation in the wake of leaked emails in which he disparaged prominent conservative figures. Alexander wrote that the “biggest loss” from the whole affair was “The Post’s standing among conservatives.”

But even as MRC and its fellow conservative media watchdog group Accuracy in Media enjoyed a “we told you so” moment over his resignation, other conservative voices — including many of those conservatives whom Weigel covered — have come out supporting his work.

And actually, the rest of of the piece cites commentators and journalists who're all backing Weigel. Maybe Politico's looking to hire Weigel as well!

Folks should read Dan Riehl forwhat's been consistentlythe best commentary on Weigel's failings. And Mike at Cold Fury's got a related piece that's worth a look as well. My position, at this point in politics, is that it's pretty much impossible to be friends with someone who's simultaneously working to utterly destroy all that I hold vital in culture, politics, and national security.